Young people appear in world polls increasingly inclined to the extreme right and using the symbols and flags of fascism, and even Nazism. It is something new and little studied that worries the democratic forces.
There are those who wonder with some astonishment why these young people, who at first would be considered idealists and followers of the values of freedom, end up trapped by extremist and violent forces.
Perhaps it should be remembered that, as traditional psychology teaches, young people are going through the most turbulent age of their lives. The most enigmatic for them who still do not feel like adults but neither do they feel like children. And at the same time they are attracted to violence. Perhaps because it is also the age of rebellion.
Those of us who have lived a long time know that in the past the left came to offer young people intertwined ideals with violence aimed at liberating them. It was violence against the bad guys who were then the bourgeoisie, the exploiters, the ones who kept them in poverty. It is enough to remember what the figure of Che Guevara was in Cuba and later worldwide as a symbol of resistance and idealism for young people. It was the fight of good against evil. Today that idol is broken like so many others created by the extreme left.
Words like revolution, left, fight against capitalism and fascism were magical for young people in search of ideals. It allowed them to express their violent instincts in search of better dreams.
When we talk about young people, we cannot forget that yesterday and today, all of them feel attracted to violence, whatever the sign. They are the flags of rebellion, of any political color.
There are families that are surprised that their children, growing up and sometimes still children, feel fascinated by violent, bloody games and movies. Psychology has always studied this phenomenon from a physiological point of view. It is the moment in which your son or daughter are not yet adults but they do not feel like children anymore. They just feel uncomfortable. That is why they tend to be together, in groups, in bands, with their symbols of whatever color. They even tend to dress all the same for fear of being cornered. It is the phenomenon of the pack that protects.
All of this is known. It is a classic. For this reason, it should not be surprising that today’s young people, in a historical moment of radical change, of artificial intelligence that scares even adults, feel more disarmed and helpless than ever.
Always in search of the new and the ideal, young people, because of us, not theirs, no longer feel attracted to what we called ideals of the left summed up in the slogan of the French Revolution of equality, liberty and fraternity.
No one can deny that for a young person today, politics is seen more as a business than as an ideal of life. In democracy, which was once a symbol of freedom against despotism and slavery, today young people discover corruption and petty personal interests.
You enter politics to get rich even if it is at the cost of betraying the very heart of democracy and its values. And this today also embraces the left and not only the right. Where are the political idols capable of making the hearts of young people and their ideals vibrate today? What they even hear from their parents is that “everyone is a thief”, that they all end up trapped by creeping interests far removed from past ideals.
But why are today’s young people who are no longer enthusiastic about the ideals of the left, end up admiring the new violent right? Why, after the idealisms of freedom and the fight against slavery, do today’s youth unearth the myths of God, country and family, symbols of the most rancid conservatism?
Why are the young people who one day fought for the ideals of pacifism, who shouted: “Make love and not war”, today enlist in the black ranks of the violent politics of an extreme right that rejoices in stirring up instincts? more animals?
The answer to these disturbing questions is not easy, but it is urgent to analyze them because it can end up infesting those who will be the leaders of the future. Something must exist in the violent slogans of the extreme right if they are able to attract more and more new generations, despite the fact that the only thing they know how to offer them in politics is incitement to violence and a love of weapons and death .
Not by chance, here in Brazil, the far-right, Bolsonaro immediately launched the ideal of armaments, the passion for firearms, allowing even minors to attend shooting clubs. During his electoral campaign, he even taught a five-year-old girl, taken in her arms, to imitate with her innocent fingers firing a gun.
No, it is not the young people who are betraying the ideals that one day allowed them to dream in politics and exercise their natural fighting instincts. We are the elders who are betraying their liberating ideals with a politics and a democracy that is increasingly tarnished with personal and petty interests.
Young people will always run in search of ideals in which to display the fire that urges them in their veins. If the left, once a symbol of liberating hopes, one day offered young people refuge and peace, today, a sad paradox, it seems to be the extreme right that offers them the mirage where they can unleash the demands of struggle and restlessness that are natural to their age.
For those of us who still believe in the values of democracy and freedom, our rejection of the resurgence of the banners of right-wing extremism should not suffice. We need to rescue for our young people the resurgence of new liberating ideals, adapted to the new times of change in which all of us, and not only young people, find ourselves trapped and confused.
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